


The Boy

by zorilleerrant



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Pre-Hogwarts, Smart Dudley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 10:26:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6325363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zorilleerrant/pseuds/zorilleerrant





	The Boy

The boy was worthless and stupid, unstable and ungrateful, a freak and a liar and a waste of space. It was okay for Dudley to hit him.

When Dudley was very, very small, he had once asked why the boy didn’t get any toys. The boy was Wrong, his mother had said, and bad boys didn’t get any toys because nobody loved them. This was how Dudley knew he was Good, and knew he was loved.

When Dudley was a little bit older, the boy had started doing chores. Dudley didn’t know why, so he asked, even though asking questions was Wrong, thinking maybe his parents loved him enough to answer when they wouldn’t answer the boy. His father had chuckled, and patted him on the head, and told him not to worry about the boy, because it built character and he had to earn his keep.

That night, Dudley couldn’t sleep for thinking. If he didn’t have to worry about the boy because he was building character, did he have to worry about himself? He wasn’t building character. Come to think of it, he wasn’t earning his keep either. Was his keep something he got for free, because he had parents who loved him? Was character something he already had, and so didn’t need more of? Or was he just a lost cause?

Later, Dudley tried doing chores. His father seemed shocked, heaping enormous amounts of praise on Dudley, fawning over his work ethic and his go-getterness, and his mother cried, showering him in kisses and wondering how he could do something so difficult all by himself.

Only it hadn’t been that difficult, not compared to what the boy did. Did he really have that little character, whatever that was, that even the tiniest hint of it was enough to shock his father? Was he really that bad at doing things that he had to be told, in no uncertain terms, that he had done it adequately well? The boy never got praise. He got nitpicked, told every single thing that was wrong with his performance, so that he didn’t end up a no-good drunk. Then he got better. What was wrong with Dudley that he had to be coddled more than someone Unstable?

Dudley wondered if he was going to grow up to be a no-good drunk.

Dudley tried to talk about Harry once, when they got to school. He’d pulled a teacher aside when all the other students had left for lunch, and whispered in her ear about the cupboard and the chores and the bad names he’d been called that they had just now in class learned not to call each other. His teacher had smiled, and patted him on the head and told him that he was ‘very creative!’

That was when Dudley had realized he was just a lost cause after all. A teacher had to lie to him. A teacher had to tell him he was creative when all he was saying was the truth, and didn’t even realize that Dudley would recognize it for what it was. Pity.

Dudley had cried that night, and when his parents had taken it out on the boy, he was glad, because at least this time it was his fault.

Once, just one time, Dudley had gotten a bad grade on a test. It was a spelling test, and Dudley was tired and didn’t feel good, and the words didn’t come out quite right. Then the boy had gotten yelled at, and told to dumb down his answers. He’d been made to do Dudley’s homework. Just for one mistake, and Dudley could feel himself slipping.

Because if the boy was stupid and worthless, and even he could do better than Dudley, even he had to try really hard just to be worse, what did that make Dudley?

It didn’t matter, though. He knew he was already stupid and worthless in his parents’ eyes, and didn’t bother ever trying to do his own work again. He never bothered to do the work or look at the books or try, when they got to the tests.

It was one stupid mistake. How long was he going to have to live with it?

Dudley started to eat at much as he could. The boy only ever got scraps, because he didn’t deserve any more. Dudley worried that someday, his parents would realize even the Freak was better than their own son. And then Dudley would be relegated to the cupboard and fed scraps.

But they praised him when he hit Harry, and that, at least, sounded genuine.

And then everything changed. Dudley remembered, because that was the birthday he’d gotten fewer presents than the year before. He counted, carefully, every Christmas and birthday, to make sure that his parents’ love wasn’t dwindling.

Because Dudley could count, and he could hit.

And then the boy had moved into Dudley’s second bedroom, and he could see everything unfolding before him. His parents had finally realized that Dudley was a Waste of Space. Enough that even the boy, who had always been a Waste of Space, who had never needed anything more than a cupboard, deserved it more than he did. That was the day Dudley knew his parents loved him only half as much as they had the day before. He wondered how soon they would take away his food.

The boy got to go to a Wizard school. The boy got the one thing Dudley had wanted all his life, found comfort from in all his favorite books. Books full of wonder. Books he hid under the bed so that he wouldn’t be accused of Believing In Magic, or worse, reading.

Harry Potter was worthless and stupid, unstable and ungrateful, a freak and a liar and a waste of space. And Dudley Dursley was okay at hitting.


End file.
